Last year, Kevin Sutherland led his Mosaic Miami Church congregation through a sermon about sight and spirituality. "God begins to wash away" our blindness, the charismatic pastor said. "God begins to let us see."

Yet it was Sutherland's foresight that would fail him. The 46-year-old preacher was charged last week in New York with trying to sell five fake Damien Hirst paintings for $185,000.

Mosaic Miami is a small, one-story church located just off South Dixie Highway in Coconut Grove. YouTube videos show Sutherland preaching in slacks and dress shirts to a sparse crowd while standing on a stage decorated with guitars.

Prosecutors say, however, this humble setup was also the stage for a brazen art hoax. Last year, Sutherland allegedly traveled to New York to try to sell five fake Damien Hirst paintings -- two "spin" and three "spot" paintings -- for $185,000.

The auction house Sotheby's had already warned the pastor that the paintings might not be authentic, but Sutherland attempted to sell them anyway. Unfortunately for him, his buyer was actually an undercover cop.

Michael E. Miller was the senior writer at the Miami New Times. For five years, he covered everything Florida could throw at him. He got an innocent man off of murder charges and got a bad cop suspended from duty. He flew in homemade airplanes, dove into the Atlantic in a tiny submarine, and skateboarded a marathon. He smoked stogies, interviewed strippers, and narrowly survived a cavity search in a Panamanian jungle prison — all in the name of journalism. His only regret is that one time he outed Colombian drug lords for sneaking strippers into Miami jail. For that, he says lo siento. He was only doing his job. Miller’s work for New Times won many national awards including back-to-back Sigma Delta Chi medallions. He has also written for the New York Times, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Chicago Magazine, Village Voice, the New York Daily News, and VQR. He now covers foreign affairs for the Washington Post.